


The Book of Daniel

by paceisthetrick



Series: Drabbles for Shells [25]
Category: Judas Kiss (2011), No Night is Too Long (2002)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paceisthetrick/pseuds/paceisthetrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim watches Danny's life in a strange series of unrelated scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Book of Daniel

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Non-explicit references to child sexual abuse.
> 
> Danny Reyes appears courtesy of Judas Kiss (2011).

 

[ ](http://s774.photobucket.com/albums/yy22/Sivanasya/?action=view&current=Untitled-50-1.jpg)

_"Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude."_

~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

_**The Book of Daniel**  
_

Danny had made his life into a film, or that's how it seemed at the time. I felt as if I were watching a movie - a strange silent kaleidoscope of disturbing and joyful images clashing and merging, a fade to black of short scenes with no plot but tremendous depth. _Cinéma Pur_ I suppose you'd call it.

There was no order to it, no chronology or logical sequence. But it was Danny through and through, a rare glimpse of _his_ life rather than his characters'. And though he never spoke, though he never laughed or cried, it was the rawest emotional experience I had ever witnessed. A spiritual excursion with a dead man. An exorcism of sorts.

I wanted to die.

His father took him fishing on the boat once he was big enough to haul the traps. Danny got caught in the line – he was so little and the trap so heavy - and it cut deeply into his arm, exposing layers of muscles. His father slapped him for his carelessness and they had to return home, another day with nothing to sell for their efforts.

Fishermen stay out for long hours. They come and go with the tide. They eat, drink, everything that one does in the course of a day on the small vessel. The cabin was cramped but that was where it took place – where Danny's father sodomized him. Danny didn't fight back. He was too little. He knew better than to cry. Any display of weakness would enrage his father. He limped back out to haul traps when it was over and it seemed to me that he was stronger, as if the rage and fear from such helplessness was funneled with renewed determination into the backbreaking task.

As a thief he was an artist. I marveled at his ability to smile at the person he was robbing blind. Once he picked up a kitchen knife and climbed the steps to his father's room. I honestly thought he'd do it, he'd kill him. That cold determined expression. The old man was drunk and snoring. He wouldn't have felt a thing. A wasted life finally at an end. But Danny turned and walked back down the wooden stairs, his eyes troubled and uncertain.

After he'd covered his father's nakedness with a blanket.

He walked with Ivo across the campus and they were so different. Ivo was so young and Danny was so happy. They weren't touching one another, they couldn't hold hands. But it seemed to me they were connected – an unbreakable bond. Ivo's hand would brush the back of Danny's and the electric charge was so great it coursed through me as I sat there in the dark stillness of the forest.

Ivo took Danny to meet his family. They lay in the chill of the early morning, Ivo relishing the prickling of the cold on his face, Danny buried under the covers. Danny hated the cold. Ivo smiled and bent down to kiss him through the thickness of the duvet, his face a picture of perfect serenity. Downstairs the furnace roared to life.

Rarely do changes in relationships happen so abruptly. Ivo was confused by Danny's sudden withdrawal. Danny had stomach aches, didn't want to be touched, stayed up all night writing or figeting with his camera. Ivo worried but didn't press the matter. He was too frightened by what was happening to him, to _them_. He confided in Isabel, as he always did. She was the one who guessed Danny had been abused. He was so uncomfortable in her presence, as if the mere thought of family was agony for him. He was angry and unhappy the entire holiday. It's normal to be nervous when meeting the in-laws, but Danny's hostility verged on something close to hatred, as if he hated her for showing him a life he'd never known, as if she were a genuine threat.

Ivo was even more patient after that. He bought Danny a puppy for Christmas – a cuddly Husky that looked like it belonged in a Disney flick. Of course it was Isabel's dog, Makita, the one she inherited when Danny died. Makita means "forever friend". Ivo named her. She was to be Danny's forever friend, someone he could trust when he felt too afraid to trust people. Danny adored the puppy – who wouldn't? – and kissed Ivo for the first time in a week with genuine happiness.

They planted a vegetable garden that Makita dug up. Danny scowled at her and she wagged her tail, pure adulation. He laughed and forgave her. But Ivo put up a fence to prevent future mishaps and Danny and Makita kissed and licked him for it.

Isabel came to them and she and Danny drove into the city together. Ivo had given him the money for a new camera and Isabel liked to shop on Barrington Street where she could pick up works by local artists for a much more reasonable price than in Vancouver. Danny had an incredible eye for novel art and guided her through the little wooden stalls. He took her through the maritime museum and aboard the ships. He knew the water better than Kit.

Ivo and Danny flew to Glasgow for a conference. They stopped in Cambridge to visit Ivo's old professor and then again in Warwick where Ivo introduced him to Martin. The three of them went out to dinner. Neither man nor anyone at the conference was under any grand illusions about what Danny was doing there, the non-scientist with Ivo. They found him more interesting for being different, and for being so young and attractive and Ivo's lover. Martin was clearly envious, wondering how Ivo did it - got all the hot young things when he was hardly Valentino. Danny used the spotlight to promote his own work and even got Martin to agree to write a screenplay. It was nothing short of a triumph for him.

Ivo was incredibly generous – monetarily, emotionally, socially. He bent his own life around Danny's, to afford him opportunities he could never have had, the poor fisherman's son from a small village. Danny used him as a springboard, a chance to launch himself and realize his own aspirations.

But he never forgot Ivo, never forgot to be grateful. He wrote long letters when they were apart - professions of his deep love for the man who had picked him up in a park and made him his own.

I felt a chill run down my spine. I turned quickly but Danny was gone. And I was lying on the ground with blood running down the side of my face.

 


End file.
